Happy Graduation Season

For some reason, I still get a feeling of "wistfulness" for lack of a better word this time of year. Even when I graduated college long after most of my peers and even now years later. Maybe it's the sense that all those things you looked forward to growing up were suddenly in the past. I felt really bad for last year's graduating high schoolers who didn't even have that big graduation. Glad most places are doing in person ceremonies this year and even others having impromptu proms.
The main reason for posting this though was to congratulate all the grads, their families and teachers who put in the work for this milestone.
Well, that and the chance to post the following link (with the video) - the blond kid with the glasses is getting all the attention, but its the other students that reminded me how brutal the middle school years can be.

He’s good: Alabama sixth-grader’s dance moves at graduation go viral

 

Graduation weekend is hectic when you work on the news side. Pretty sure there was a weekend where I covered five graduations in four days. It's hard to make each story different. In that sense it reminded me of covering high school football.

Like Dan I graduated from college when I was older (I took a few years off after high school). I don't really think about the ceremony or the accomplishment, but occasionally I'll think about the degree and wonder how the heck I pulled it off.

We had a Catholic school here last year that worked around the large-gathering ban by having it as a socially distanced Mass in their football stadium. The handful of drive-ins in this neck of the woods hosted a few ceremonies. I think Gillette Stadium did, too. Good for the kids.

 

I guess graduation is earlier here to avoid the soul-crushing heat. High schools are generally done the week of Memorial Day, colleges toward the beginning of May.

 

Was it Driftwood who organized his high school's graduation last year? Kind of a baseball batting order -- you're up, you're on deck, you're in the hole. It was very cool.

 

When I was an education reporter, I would cover up to 10 ceremonies over two weeks, including sometimes two in one day. Like Wicked said, it was hard to make them different.

It was all the same routine, arrive early, ask the principal to find three or four interesting students for me to talk to -- not just the valedictorian -- watch the procession, listen to the speeches and leave when they start reading names to beat the traffic and make deadline. And always make sure someone there had my phone number so they could call if all heck broke loose after I left.

My favorite was the school district that used the local A Ball stadium. They would do a double header, at, IIRC, 2 p.m. and 7:30. I would spend the time in between writing my article in the stadium club, where there was usually food available.

When my son was in high school, he would occasionally take photos for the paper where I was working. The day of his graduation, the photo editor called and said the photographer assigned to shoot it called in sick and could lil MTM shoot it. I explained he was graduating and he couldn't. He then asked if I could shoot it and I told him I just wanted to be a dad. I ended up taking some photos before the ceremony, then sat with my family for the procession and speeches, and left to take more photos after my son's name was read.

 

Best graduation I covered was for the alternative high school, lot of teen moms with kids, other students with different needs. The kind of students where a) a high school diploma was a real achievement and b) would make a difference in their lives. Some students were excited because the diploma meant they could join the Marines (which I think at the time didn't accept GEDs).

 

The first graduation I ever had to cover ended up having a weird vibe because the principal was handing out diplomas even though she had quietly resigned/was fired shortly before. A bunch of kids had a food fight in the cafeteria a few weeks earlier and the principal, rather than breaking it up, was laughing during the incident.

We had heard rumors that she was out, but couldn’t nail down anything until a couple days before the ceremony and, being a weekly, we couldn’t print anything until the following week. We ended up, as I recall, doing two stories, one on the graduation that didn’t mention the principal’s ouster because the publisher didn’t want to take away from the kids’ moment, and another story on the ouster.

 

I've been through these as a graduate and a reporter, but the best one is coming later this month. My daughter is graduating from high school.

 

The best part of growing up in the Breadbasket of America was getting out of school no later than May 15. Kids were needed in the fields cutting wheat, which could happen as early as Memorial Day weekend.

When I was in grad school, I worked for a photography studio that made its bread and butter on graduation. I have stories. Like the high school that clearly didn't prioritize math because they didn't set out enough chairs for the graduates. Or the one that thought that the perfect solemn piece of music for the ceremony was an acapella rendition of "Sold (the Grundy County Auction Incident".

 

Old enough to remember streakers at the high school's graduation the year before ours. I don't remember being particularly awed by either high school or college diploma. However, as I've gotten older -- and attended other ceremonies -- I've realized for some kids, that HS diploma is the only time they'll be on a stage in front of their peers as they shake hands with the principal or school superintendent, especially in one-stoplight towns like Mount Vernon, Missouri -- where my sister's kids are growing up.

At my nephew's graduation two years ago from UF's engineering school, my 84-year-old mother kept saying, "There sure are a lot of Orientals! I can't pronounce anybody's name."

"Asians, Mom. They'd rather be called Asians."

"Well, I still don't know why so many Orientals want to go to Florida instead of their own country."

"I'm guessing most of them grew up in Florida and were class valedictorians, unlike your grandson (who skated through high school in Savannah and went to Florida as a legacy)."

Then the conversation veered into something about not speaking English, which made me laugh since my mother referred to towns near us as Woodstork and Ellijoy.

Mom = Sum Ting Wong.

 

Ho Lee Fuk!

 

as long as every graduation continues to honor Macho Man Randy Savage by playing Pomp and Circumstance, they will always be a big deal. ohhhh yeahhhh